


Head First

by thedeadflag



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Humor, NaNoWriMo 2017, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-03 00:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12737565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedeadflag/pseuds/thedeadflag
Summary: Santana once again finds herself in trouble with her girlfriend, but this is the first time Rachel's given her the silent treatment. And after a shitty day at school with everyone getting on her nerves, Rachel breaks her silence in Glee. Through song, of course.All because she wanted a late night snack





	Head First

The crowd of students parted like the red sea as Santana stormed down the halls towards Glee. She'd been in a mood all day, so Jacob Ben Israel throwing himself into the trash to get out of her way wasn't anything out of the ordinary, even if that's the type of situation Santana found herself in.

Berry was mercurial at best, constantly doing her best impression of Sybil, and while she loved the girl, Santana was pretty sure Rachel would be the death of her. In what world did someone get it in their head to kick Santana motherfucking Lopez out of the house at eleven o'clock right before they were about to get their mack on?

Rachel's world, apparently.

It just didn't make sense, and Rachel refused to even talk to her, not then, and not all day today either, so yeah, she was in a bit of a bloodthirsty mood.  What of it? People could deal, or whatever if they had a problem.

They weren't the ones that had to deal with a suddenly mute Rachel Berry. A storm was coming; Santana just wasn't sure when or what kind it'd be, so she was right to be a little on edge.

"Berry still giving you the cold shoulder?" Puck's voice would have startled her if her body wasn't already completely tense with fury.

"Shut up."

He tried to fling his stupid beefy arm over her shoulder. Key word being 'tried'. "Oh, don't be like that, Snixx. Your friendly neighbourhood sex shark has a heart, too."

The fact that he was still following her meant one of two things: that he cobbled together enough brain cells to decide he had something to say to her, or worse, that he wanted or needed something from her. Santana desperately hoped it was the former, because she was thisclose to tearing random kids' heads off for getting in her way or annoying her, and while Puck was in Glee, it didn't net him _that_ much favour from her.

"You gave me ten seconds in the party at the end of sophomore year, I'll give you ten starting now." She sniped, rolling her eyes at Puck's mock wounded expression, hand over his heart.

"Easy now. Just wanted to warn you Rachel's setting up in Glee. She's got that scary but sort of smokin' hot super intensity thing going on." She could hardly suppress a groan at his warning, knowing she was probably in for some ridiculous emotional venting through song and dance.

Because of course Rachel couldn't communicate without a goddamn accompanying band and musical score. Times like these, she almost missed the mile a minute rants.

"Shit." She let out, rounding the final corner, the doors of glee club dead ahead. "On a scale of one to ten how bad will this be for me?"

"She's gonna bury you, babe. Get it? Bury? Berry?" Santana gave him a punch to the shoulder for his shitty efforts at comedy and marched into Glee, immediately spotting Rachel sitting on a stool and a sparse, acoustic band set up behind her.

She bit her lip, thinking back to if it was worse than a more active dance-driven number.

Probably. Shit.

To make matters worse, Rachel refused to make eye contact with her, but Santana wasn't so easily quelled. She'd been far too driven by anger today not to let spite lead her to the front seat in the middle of the club, knowing Rachel was too professional of a performer not to focus her attention there.

If Rachel was gonna bitch her out through song, then she'd have to do it to her face. Especially since Santana knew she didn't do anything wrong and didn't deserve this.

Unless it was an apology of course, but she didn't get that feeling. Not with how tense Rachel was, like a coiled up spring ready to explode. Still, she'd let Rachel go all out on her, then they'd talk, and make up, and they'd find their way back to good again, like always.

Puck plopped down a few seats away and pulled a bag of popcorn out of his backpack for some fucking reason. Santana pointed at him and gestured her thumb across her neck, but he just laughed. She'd make a note later to re-establish her reputation, but for now, she had a slightly more pressing matter.

"Okay guys, it's the start of a new week, a new theme, but before we get down to business on that, Rachel has...insisted that she perform for us, so we're going to give her the floor to start the week off." Schue said, giving his standard awkward single clap before making his way to the side of the room and dimming the lights a bit.

Santana crossed her legs and sat back in her chair, cocking an eyebrow at her girlfriend in await of whatever musical bitch slap Rachel had planned for her.

The random bland-faced band dude started up with the acoustic, and Santana immediately knew this was going to be a mess. It was more melancholy than a Helena Bonham Carter movie.

"Sure I think about you now and then, but it's been a long, long time..." Rachel started, already ramping the dramatics because she saw Rachel in the damn hallway three times today, and spent most of last night with her. Long time? Please. "Well I've got a good life now, I've moved on. So when you cross my mind..."

Sixteen hours at most. Rachel was singing like it'd been twenty years or something, like this was a flashback from Titanic or whatever.

Rachel set her gaze on her, the heartbreak clear in her eyes, those brown doe eyes swirling with despair. "I try not to think about what might have been...'cause that was then and we have taken different roads. We can't go back again, there's no use giving in. And there's no way to know what might have been."

"What."

The single word escaped her as that burning anger in her gut rose to her chest, forcing it out of her as her brain buzzed with betrayal. They always worked out their problems, always. Sure, sometimes they had a cooling off period, sometimes she had to storm out so she could go to the yelling place without scaring her girlfriend, and sometimes Rachel locked herself in her room for eighteen hours of vocal exercises to vent, but they always found a way back to each other.

Frankly, it was kind of fucking offensive that Rachel was throwing in the towel over something so damned ridiculous. Or, well, it probably was, since she didn't even know what she'd done to piss her off in the first place.

 _'Different roads'? Different roads my perfectly sculpted ass..._ She mused, re-crossing her legs and crossing her arms over her chest while she was at it, entirely unimpressed with the display.

Maybe they hadn't, you know, sat down and had a real talk about it, but she knew Rachel was going to New York after graduation, and Santana knew she wanted to go to school, too. New York was as good a place as any, and yeah, she sometimes laid awake at night thinking about what things would be like there. Rachel would insist on complete control over the home decor, and Santana would grab furniture and accessories from yard sales and the side of the road. Rachel would be too swamped at NYADA to work, but she'd work as a bartender or a waitress or something and help pay her way. They'd both be busy, but they'd have movie nights, and tequila, and a nice bed.

And maybe she'd thought a lot about it, but whatever.  And maybe it really sucked that Rachel thought they were on different roads, because she always thought they were riding together, Streisand-heavy road trip playlist and all.

Santana would have probably cried if she wasn't so damn incensed.

"We can sit and talk about this all night long, and wonder why we didn't last. Yes, they might be the best days we will ever know...but we'll have to leave them in the past." Rachel continued, pouring her heart into the words and tearing through Santana's fury to make a pinpoint strike at her heart.

Rachel had always been so exuberant, like a damn puppy on speed a lot of the times, and it'd been endearing. Okay, it'd been really cute once she started paying enough attention to the girl behind the obnoxiousness, knee socks, and argyle sweaters.

And hearing Rachel sing about how their time had been their best days? Hell yeah, she agreed. One hundred percent.

So as fucking if she was just gonna let Rachel let go. As if she was going to accept that their time together was in the past, not when Rachel hadn't even officially broken up with her, not when they hadn't even talked about what was wrong.

The chorus started up again, but Santana's brain was too tied up to really pay attention, wondering how she could fix this if Rachel wasn't there to work with her on fixing it. Hell, Rachel intervened enough early on in their relationship to reel her back in when she'd freak out and go through all that gay panic shit, especially after Finn outed her, so Berry owed her that much. Rachel owed her the chance to reel her starry-eyed ass back in this time.

It'd only been two and a half months, sure, but she adored her mariposa. She wasn't going to give up without a fight. She'd laid her heart on the line already, and she was gonna do it again if it meant saving what they had.

"Same old look in your eyes, it's a beautiful night. I'm so tempted to stay..." Santana shot Rachel a pleading look as she sang, trying to make it clear that she wanted Rachel to stay, that she deserved a shot at convincing her to stay. "...but too much time has gone by. We should just say goodbye, and turn and walk away..."

Fuck that.

Santana rose to her feet, fists clenched at her side as Rachel started back in on the chorus, knowing if she had to endure the rest of this, she'd definitely go to the yelling place, which would probably lead to her crying and Rachel crying, and no fucking way was that gonna happen in Glee, in front of their friends.

Or, well the other gleeks. Puck was an asshole and eating popcorn like it was a damn movie, Finn was a homophobic ogre, and B was her wonderful self, but the rest were alright, sort of. Okay, no, but they were tolerable, sometimes, or whatever.

The point was, Rachel liked them, and she wouldn't embarrass Rachel in front of them, strictly for her girlfriend's sake. That was what mattered.

"This is bullshit." She stated as she took a step forward, ignoring the guitar and the fact that Rachel was still singing. If Rachel was going to pull her drama schtick in Glee, then she was going to charge head first into it and get her girlfriend thinking right again. "This is bullshit and you know it. You're the one going on and on about being adults and mature, so we's gon' be gettin' our Dr. Phil on, tiny."

Out of pure courtesy she let Rachel wrap up the song, knowing Rachel got anxious leaving a performance unfinished. Still, the moment the last word was sung, she grabbed the mic and put it out of Berry's reach.

"I love a good cat fight." With the sudden silence that fell over the room, it was impossible not to hear Puck's words, forcing her to spin around and level a glare at him, and then the rest of the room.

"I'mma go all Lima Heights if anyone pulls any shit! You get me?!" Thankfully, everyone just sat back in their seats, and even Schue held his hands up a bit in a clear gesture that she had the floor now. Santana turned back to Rachel and cupped her girlfriend's face, fighting the urge to soften. "I'm not walking away. You're so damn ridiculous, you know?"

Rachel sniffled, her soft sad gaze piercing through her heart. As endlessly talkative as Rachel was, seconds ticked past, leaving her feeling that Rachel really had decided her song was enough.

Except fuck that. It wasn't nearly enough. She deserved more than that, better than that.

Her throat was closing in on itself like it was under a vise, but she'd spent the last two months trying to be strong. To work up to being public, like Rachel deserved. If Rachel was waiting for a sign, a message, then she'd give her one.

Santana ran a hand through Rachel's hair and leaned down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Mariposa, are you really breaking up with me? Here? After...what, trying to find something to snack on after ten?"

"My gummis..." It was soft and quiet, barely audible, and Santana needed a second or two to process the sounds over in her mind before she deciphered them, but it was an answer.

Finally, an answer. About fucking time.

"You're breaking up with me because I ate your _gummi bears_? The ones in the freezer?"

It was preposterous. Obscene. But exactly the sort of absurdity she should have expected from her obnoxiously overdramatic goober.

"You ate my _yellows_. You could have eaten the other bag, but you ate my collection of golden gummis, and now everything's ruined!" Rachel blurted out, pouting harder than she'd seen her do in a long time, her face knit in grief.

Santana shook her head, because of course. She should have realized, given her weirdo girlfriend's obsession with everything gold, and anything even sort of close to it. "I'm sorry I ate out of your collection, babe.  I didn't know you had separate bags for a reason, and you know I love lemon shit. I didn't know you had some superstition."

"You should have asked! Just like how you threw away my lucky toothbrush and forced me to dumpster dive for it so I could practice my whistle register! I set aside one gummi for every pro or amateur vocal performance and now I'm short seven and you know I'm a little psychic, just like you have your psychic Mexican third eye, so trust me when I say I know with a hundred percent certainty that I will bomb the next seven to make up for it! I have my NYADA audition in four days and I can't fit seven amateur and professional performances in between now and then so I won't get into NYADA and my dreams are ruined, so what else am I supposed to do?!"

Santana blinked at the wailing agony pouring out of her girlfriend, unsure how she'd inexplicably managed to mess up so bad, and how all of it somehow fell onto her shoulders. Still, she was Santana Lopez, and she didn't have a four point oh GPA just because it looked nice.

She let out a lengthy groan and tugged Rachel off the stool. "You do what we've done before! You gets that talented tongue movin' and you work it out with your Snixx!" She yelled back, rolling her eyes. "You know I got that Solo Star game for Xbox. The one with online singing comps twenty-four-seven? I think we can get in seven of'em afores the end of the night."

Rachel's eyes went wide. "That's a thing? Are you sure they're...real enough?"

"Two of the top ranked players on the leaderboard got invited to try out on The Voice, so I'm pretty sure, yeah." Santana noted, decently certain her memory of that was right. She'd heard something along those lines, anyways, and the important part was calming Rachel down and giving her a solution to her stress, which she seemed to have done, with all the tension flooding out of her girlfriend.

"Okay. _Okay_..." Rachel muttered to herself, a blank look in her eyes for a long moment before focusing back on Santana. "Still. You threw away my lucky toothbrush."

"That thing was haggard as all hell and probably growing mold. I thought you just forgot to doze it. If I knew it was important, I would have just dunked it in some bleach or whatever and put up biohazard curtains around your bathroom." She insisted, making a hundred percent sense, something she hoped Rachel would see now that she'd explained herself.

By Rachel's scoff, and cocked hip, apparently not. "Santana...you can't just rummage through my stuff! It was specifically kept in my lucky third grade travel bag for a reason."

It was ridiculous that they were even having this conversation. She'd just tried to be a good girlfriend, knowing how hygienic and disease-averse Rachel was. "Okay, first, you never told me _not_ to take a peek through your stuff! You know I'm curious..."

"Maybe this would be better done outside of Glee?" Mister Schuester butted it, earning dual glares from her and Rachel, even if he did make a point.

Santana pointed at the gleeks in the risers, making eye contact with each one. "This leaves the room, I know who I'll be draggin' back to Lima Heights!" With that said, she followed Rachel's typical storm-out and pursued her down the hall towards their lockers. "Anyway, you know I'm curious, and if you want to snoop around my room, too, have at it!"

"That's...that's not the point! The point if you just did things to my stuff without coming to me." Rachel shot back before coming to a half at her locker.

"Like I said, I thought it was good to doze, the bag looked ancient and gross. And the gummis were under the bag of steaks your fathers bought, so I thought they were fair game, not the ones in your frozen vegan food nook." Santana could see she wasn't making as much progress as she hoped, so she decided to go a softer route after checking her surroundings to ensure the coast was clear. "Baby...I'm sorry I stressed you out and accidentally messed with your superstitions. I didn't mean to scare you."

Rachel leaned up against her locker, peering up at Santana with those big doe eyes. "But you did. And you keep doing it."

Santana exhaled slowly through her nose and stepped into Rachel's personal bubble, angling her head up to press a kiss to her girl's forehead. "Then let's fix that. Look, you helped me handle my shit, you learned about all my demons and all the crap I carry around with me, and that's good. I needed that, so I wouldn't feel like I'm about to have a damn heart-attack every time I pass you in the halls and catch you waving my way." She let out slowly, quietly, her eyes seeking out Rachel's. "There's been so much focus on _me_. I want to know about _you_. I'm sorry I haven't pushed that hard enough and ended up making you feel like your world was falling apart, but I want to know now. I want to know your quirks and traditions and routines and superstitions. I want to know all of'em."

"You do?" God, the gleeful hope gleaming in Rachel's eyes could have blinded her and she still would have smiled at the sight.

There she was. Her star.

"Of course, tiny. I love you."

For all her trepidation and stressing over that particular L word across the past two or three weeks, and all the aggravating actions and silence from Rachel over the past day, the way the word just flowed out of her all casually had Santana feeling impressed with herself, if equally terrified. It was so early in their relationship, but she just had a good feeling.

And yeah, that feeling was a four letter word starting with L, what of it?

There was a brief moment where Santana's breath caught in her throat as Rachel's jaw dropped and eyes went wide as saucers, but then Rachel was fucking jumping onto her like she was a damn koala, and Santana could breathe again. Even if Rachel's adorable antics were probably going to mean a few repairs to her uniform so Sue wouldn't have her doing wind sprints in the snow for the next week, she could breathe.

"I love you, too!" Rachel squealed, arms wrapped almost tight around her neck to choke her. "I wanted to say it for a week and two days now, and I thought maybe a musical performance with..."

Santana just held onto her munchkin and grinned, listening to Rachel's absolutely over the top plan for confessing her love, and how their argument in glee and this confession rendered it null and void, but that maybe they could salvage parts of it for Valentine's day as a duet. It was all wild and absurd, but Rachel always reached for the stars, she never settled, and Santana loved that about her

"...and it's just so exciting, and it'll take so much planning and choreography and...and I suppose you will have to learn all my routines and methods if we have any hope of keeping on track to be ready for regionals and valentine's day." Rachel continued, letting her legs drop down, returning herself to her feet again. The girl was cute when she went all koala-like, but while she was strong, she couldn't hold Rachel's dead weight forever. "Are you sure you want to know? Finn thought a lot of them were weird."

"Uh, yeah, 'cuz you're a total weirdo, but you're, you know, a lovable weirdo. I'm game for whatever, mariposa." She answered, running a hand through Rachel's hair in hopes to hide how much it was shaking. It wasn't the first time she'd confessed her love to a girl, but with all the adrenaline and fear and excitement coursing through her, she couldn't help but marvel, knowing she was touching a girl she loved. A girl who loved her back.

Rachel bit her lip for a few moments, the gears in her brain clearly working away as Berry pondered her options. "My nightly routine needs to be done in a specific order, or I won't sleep." Rachel started, not telling Santana anything she hadn't already figured out early on in their relationship. Spurred on by her lack of reaction, Berry took a deep breath. "And that when I'm eating fruit or desserts served in a bowl, I need to eat from the left side of the bowl. That's why all my bowls have lines down one side of them."

Santana blinked, knowing that made zero sense, since bowls didn't have sides. You know, out of respect to the fact that they didn't have flat sides and all. Still, it was more eccentric than anything, so she nodded along. "Okay, yeah, I was wonderin' what that was about. Next?"

"Well, I always exit through the same door I entered from when I'm at a house, or theater, or any other space that means something to me. It'd be bad luck otherwise. I have to make my bed every day to completion before doing anything on it, or it's bad luck. And before every acting performance, I put a cork in my mouth...don't laugh! It helps with my diction!" Rachel started, quickly putting a halt to her near attempt at making a joke about her wordiness. Which, whatever, she'd hit Rachel with it later on, it was a good joke. "Anyways, I always skip the 9th step of the stairs leading to my room, and I practice my whistle register with my lucky toothbrush, and I eat strawberries the morning of every major performance, and..."

Santana tried to keep a mental log of everything Rachel was rattling off as her girl spoke a mile a minute. She was pretty sure she was getting most of it, but there'd be times when she'd slip; even she couldn't be perfect every day of the week no matter how she tried, likely committing another crime against Rachel's methods and imagination somewhere down the line, but she wasn't sure she'd have her eccentric drama queen any other way. And she'd make sure to do better and live up to the belief Rachel had in her.

They were gonna make it out of Lima and rule Manhattan. They were gonna make it together, Santana just knew it. And as they made their way back to Glee, because of course Rachel couldn't skip a day, maybe she didn't glance too long behind them as she wrapped an arm around Rachel's waist.

The last thing on her mind was what might have been had Rachel got her wish in glee. Their future was much too damn bright to be concerned about what ifs or any of that.

But maybe Rachel owed her a dinner at the Stix for the stress on her heart and all. Fair's fair.

**Author's Note:**

> So this one is a little choppy and rusty, but I took it as an exercise to see how well I had their voices down still after so long without writing them or reading about them. I hope it was entertaining, at least, haha!  
> This ficlet's sort of canon-compliant, just with some changes to accommodate how I think things should have gone. Rachel breaking up with Finn after he outed Santana (a matter of principle for her), Santana dealing with the aftermath of being outed before she was ready and all the gay panic that comes with that sort of experience a lot of the time, etc. That all happened outside of the fic, but in the fic's timeline anyways. 
> 
> (Title inspired by Goldfrapp's song of the same name. Rachel sings Little Texas' "What Might Have Been" in glee)


End file.
